DSU: The Digital Storytelling Unconference

Year

2012, 2013

Where we Started

In 2012 we were hearing a lot about digital storytelling, but the more we heard it, the more we suspected that nobody quite new what this phrase actually meant. More precisely, we all had a feeling that we knew it when we saw it, but couldn’t specifically say what it was or was not.

What we Did

To answer that burning question, we convened an unconference and invited people from as wide a group as we could find. An unconference is like a small conference, but the content is created by who shows up. Topics are pitched in the morning and voted on, then scheduled. What sounds like chaos produces lineups and experiences that are unmatched at larger and more formal scales.

We found great partners in the newly-renovated River Market in New Westminster, who generously contributed their large and varied space, and helped organize meal deals with their food vendors. A handful of sponsors took a chance with us, and we held our breath to see if anyone would show up.

The Results

And they did show up! For two years in a row, we held the conference with nearly a hundred people coming from digital and non-digital interests. They presented, listened, watched, talked, and played with ideas that connected individuals and practices in a new way.

For a digital subject, the exploration was often very analog. It speaks to our belief that while digital is how we connect and make things, where we really experience happens in person.

Did we come away with a definition of Digital Storytelling? Not really, but we saw it less as one thing and more like a way of thinking about using digital media to communicate not only ideas but also the feeling of something. The variety and sincerity that we saw in attendees, and what we learned from them, informed much of our work in the years to come.

About This Land

Even work that happens in the nowhere/everywhere of the Internet comes from a physical place. The place where we work and live is the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

We live and work on stolen land.

There are many ways to word a land acknowledgement. Why did we choose these words, exactly?

Once arresting, land acknowledgements are now familiar in many public spaces and gatherings. The repetition works, but the paradox is that it can dull the poignancy of these important statements. Online we often see land acknowledgements shuffled into footers and About pages, more of a checkbox than a felt statement.

Stolen land isn’t a phrase we came up with, and it is strong wording. We invoke it here to keep our own awareness of Reconciliation sharp. In our design work we take conscious steps to ensure land acknowledgements are more than easily overlooked boilerplate. These are small steps in a long process; they’re made to remind us and others of the work ahead.

What makes this place special to us

The area now called Metro Vancouver is a study of dramatic contrasts: sea level breaks to the sharp rise of mountains, wealth and hardship abut and overlap, and a gentle climate belies a fitfully slumbering tectonic monster.

Everywhere we look here we find life and change at different scales. Living here means being alert to confluences and conflicts, and being careful not to fall into anxiety or whatever-ism. It’s a place that challenges and inspires, and makes evident the many types of edges that we live along. That awareness is infused in our way of working, and makes our work something that couldn’t be the same were it from anywhere else.

To us, this is an inspiring place in many ways. But those inspirations come with a responsibility to recognize the historical wrongs that led to our presence here.